Day in Engineering History Archive - October 18

Note: These historical tidbits have been collected from various sources, mostly on the Internet. As detailed in
this article,
there is a lot of wrong information that is repeated hundreds of times because most websites do not validate with authoritative
sources. On RF Cafe, events with hyperlinks have been verified.

Please submit significant historical events and
dates for inclusion in these lists. I will be glad to include your name and birthday. Please do not submit your death
date ;-) A couple years ago, I began commemorating the birthdays of notable people and events with
special RF Cafe logos. Where available, I like to use images
from postage stamps from the country where the person or event occurred.

October18

1799:
Christian Schönbein, who discovered and named
ozone (O3) for its peculiar smell (ozo is Greek for
smell), was born. 1876: The state of
Alaska was officially transferred to America by Russia. 1871: English mathematician
Charles Babbage, whose difference engine
is considered the first programmable calculator, died. 1892: The first long-distance telephone line was opened
between Chicago and New York. 1922: The
British Broadcasting Company was
formed, and five years later became the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 1931: American inventor
Thomas Alva Edison died at age 84. 1945: The
International Military
Tribunal portion of the Nazi War Crimes trial opened in Nuremberg. 1954: TI announced the world's first
transistor radio, the
Regency TR-1. 1959: The USSR announced an unmanned space vehicle,
Luna 3, had taken first pictures of far
side of the moon. 1962:
Dr. James Watson of the U.S.,
Dr. Francis Crick &
Dr. Maurice Wilkins of U.K. won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for work in determining
double-helix molecular structure of DNA. 2004: Scientists at UC Irvine announced the development of the world's
longest electrically conducting
nanotubes. 2006:
Microsoft released
Internet Explorer 7. 2012: Antennalyzer inventor
Wendell C. Morrison died.